Everything I built

Vanessa's POV

“You are making the worst mistake of your life, ” those had been my father's exact words. I'd stood in the doorway of his study, my eyes fixated on him, my face devoid of every emotion known to man.

"I am not asking you to stay forever," he had said, leaning back in his chair, fingers laced together on the desk the way he always did when he was choosing his words. "I am asking you to think. You are a Lycan's daughter, Vanessa. Do you understand what that means? What you carry? You cannot just set it down on the side of the road because it is heavy."

I had understood perfectly. That was precisely the problem.

I had grown up watching men flinch when my father walked into a room. I had grown up at dinners where visiting Alphas laughed too loudly at his jokes and agreed too quickly with his opinions, their eyes never fully at ease, always measuring the distance between themselves and the door.

I had grown up being introduced as Jordan's daughter and watching whatever warmth had been in a person's face rearrange itself into something more careful. More guarded. I had never been just Vanessa to anyone in that world. I had always been a warning dressed in skin.

I had not wanted that life. I had not wanted to be feared. I had wanted something ordinary and warm and mine. And no title, no matter how heavy, was worth more to me than that.

So I had looked my father in the eye and said nothing, because there had been nothing left to say. I had turned toward the door.

"You don't know what you're walking away from." His voice had followed me. "You don't know what's waiting for you out there. And when it breaks you, and it will break you, you will come back here on your knees."

My hand had been on the door frame, my other hand hovering around the door frame. With a deep breath, I whirled around just so that I'd look into his old eyes once more.

"Watch me," I had said, and walked out.

That had been three years ago.

Now, I stood in front of the mirror in our bedroom and smiled at the woman looking back at me. Of course it took a lot of humiliation by werewolves who thought they were superior and were convinced that I was an omega were wolf.

It turned out that Omegas were considered weak and often despised. That changed the moment I crawled my way up to the Luna level

The black fur coat sat across my shoulders,the collar brushing my jaw, the hem grazing the tops of my thighs. The dress beneath it was deep burgundy, fitted in a way that Ronan always noticed, always commented on in that low, unhurried voice of his that made even a simple compliment feel like something private.

My hair was pinned up with a few loose strands falling against the side of my neck, and the earrings catching the light were the ones he had brought back from the summit in Ashford two winters ago. Small gold crescents. He had said they looked like the moon, and that the moon reminded him of me.

I had told him that was unbearably sentimental, he'd grinned and put them in my hand anyway.

I missed that grin. I had been missing it for months now, the particular way it started slow, like it was deciding whether the moment deserved it before committing fully, the way it always reached his eyes before it reached his mouth.

I missed the weight of him on the other side of the bed and the smell of pine and cool earth that clung to his skin after a long run. I missed the way he argued strategy with me at the kitchen table, sleeves pushed up, leaning forward like I had said something that genuinely surprised him, even when I had been saying the same thing for three years. He listened. That had been the first thing I had noticed about him. Not his face, not his title. The fact that he actually listened.

The Lycan name had not followed me into the Wild Bloomers pack. I had come quietly, given a different surname, moved like a woman with no extraordinary history. And Ronan had still chosen me.

I exhaled slowly, the smile staying.

My father had promised I would come back on my knees. Instead I had come into my own. I had put everything I inherited from Jordan, the instinct for strategy, the ability to read a room, the bone-deep understanding of how power moved and where it was likely to fracture, into building something with my husband. Wild Bloomers had been a mid-tier pack when I arrived. Now, it was respected.

I'd built everything with Ronan by my side,And tonight, I was going to watch him walk back through that door and see the welcome I had organized for him. The hall decorated, the pack assembled, the best meal the kitchen had produced all season. He had been gone for months, sent to mediate a brutal territorial dispute between two packs in the north. He had left with a bag and a forehead kiss and a promise to be back before I forgot what he looked like.

I had not forgotten.

I turned away from the mirror, picked up the small clutch from the dresser, and walked toward the door. The hall would be full by now. The pack always gathered early when their Alpha was returning. There was something almost ceremonial about it, the way everyone straightened up, dressed better, laughed a little louder, like his presence alone raised the temperature of the room.

The hall was warm and loud when I entered, lanterns burning gold, every table full, the low pulse of conversation rising to meet the high wooden ceiling. Heads turned when I came through the main doors. A few of the elders nodded. Some of the younger pack members shifted straighter without seeming to realize they had done it. I had not asked for that kind of authority. It had gathered around me.

I moved through the room with a glass of deep red wine cradled in one hand, greeting people by name, pausing to squeeze an elder's shoulder, and laughing at a joke I had already heard twice.

I had just settled into my seat at the head table when the great doors at the far end of the hall swung open.

The room shifted, conversations dropping half a register as the chairs scrapped, people turning.

Ronan walked in.

He was exactly as I remembered. The travel had put a tiredness around his eyes but not in them. His coat was dark, dusted from the road, and he had not shaved in what looked like several days. He looked like he had been working hard and didn't mind.

His eyes found mine across the hall immediately.

The smile that broke across his face was the one I had been missing for four months. Wide and warm and specifically for me.

I rose from my chair slowly, the wine glass still in my hand, my own smile answering his across the distance between us. Around us the pack was getting to their feet, the noise building, hands coming together in welcome.

He raised a hand to acknowledge the room and began walking forward, and I watched him, beaming.

He stopped a few paces from the high table and turned to face the room fully. The hall quieted by degrees, the way it always did when he was about to speak.

He drew a breath and his voice carried easily to every corner.

“Let's rise and welcome..." He paused, his gaze sweeping the hall. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "My new heir."

The applause erupted immediately.

I blinked.

Heir?

The word circled uselessly in my head.

Wild Bloomers had no shortage of talented warriors. No shortage of promising young wolves either. Ronan had spent months in the north negotiating alliances. Perhaps he had taken a protégé. Found some distant relative. Chosen a successor for training.

Beside me, Elder Marcus was already nodding approvingly.

"A wise decision," someone murmured from further down the table.

The room seemed delighted by news I had not been invited to hear beforehand.

My legs stayed upright, the smile still on my face because my face had not yet received the message that something was wrong. My fingers tightened slightly around the stem of the wine glass. Around me the room was rising, hands coming together again, louder this time, chairs scraping back with enthusiasm.

Ronan turned his head and looked directly at me.

His smile had not changed.

A woman moved through the doors behind him.

She was young and undeniably pretty. Her hands were folded across the unmistakable fullness of a belly far along in its growth, and she moved with through the crowd carefully.

The applause swelled.

I had not moved, the smile still spreading across my face as my heart slammed hard against my chest. My body has not yet understood the message or what the woman was doing in my hall.

Ronan turned to face me fully now, one hand extended toward the woman at his side, his voice rising clean and clear over the noise of the room.

"The mother of my pup."

The glass did not fall,I made sure of that. My fingers held it with a steadiness that had nothing to do with calm and everything to do with the fact that I was Jordan's daughter, and Jordan's daughter did not shatter in public.

But something inside me did.

The room kept clapping. People around me were smiling, leaning toward each other, murmuring. Someone near the back let out a celebratory howl and others joined it, the sound lifting to the rafters, filling every corner of the hall I had decorated for him.

I felt a sharp sting in my eyes, Ronan's eyes still looking at me. That was when I understood that this was not a mistake, this was not a misunderstanding I could smooth over in a Private room later tonight.

There was no version of this where he had not known exactly what he was doing when he walked through those doors with her beside him and me standing at the head of his table in the dress he liked.

He had chosen this room, this moment and this audience.

He had chosen to do it in front of everyone.

My face did not change. My spine did not bend. I lowered myself back into my chair with the same ease I had risen from it, set the wine glass down without a sound, and looked back at my husband across the length of the hall.

I smiled at him, and I hated myself for how long it took to stop.